As a pink rabbit totters around the stage to the intro tape of the Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop, Emirates braces itself for emo meltdown. Green Day have reached critical mass. Having pumped the three-minute punk-pop song to bursting point on 2004's rock opera American Idiot, its successful conversion to Broadway musical and its sprawling state-of-the-nation follow-up, 21st Century Breakdown, they tipped into the red in 2012 by releasing three albums – ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre! – in as many months, while frontman Billie Joe Armstrong battled addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs. Tonight, we half expect them to self-destruct in an orgy of new album filler, on-stage tantrums and confetti cannons.

Instead, they take to a frills-free stage in triumphant mood for a storming two-and-a-half hours shorn of stadium theatrics. Armstrong's only props are a T-shirt gun that can reach the sound desk, and a bizarre cross between a flamethrower and a loo-roll dispenser that fires Andrex into the moshpit. In classic DIY punk fashion, he lets the fans own the show, inviting (surprisingly competent) volunteers on stage to sing on Longview or to strike powerchords on a cover of Operation Ivy's Knowledge. He even gets a bloke in a full-face union flag skinsuit up to bark the glam chants of Know Your Enemy, unconcerned that he might be inadvertently giving a platform to the EDL.

For all their relentless barrage of power-pop melody and revolutionary rhetoric, Green Day's crossover popularity is built on punking up the cosy and familiar: trad folk jigs, C&W standards, 50s crooner tunes, Queen. Longview gobs in the face of Antmusic, Stray Heart gives Town Called Malice a Black Flag tattoo, Waiting guides Petula Clark's Downtown into the punk slums and When I Come Around gives Sweet Home Alabama an amphetamine shot to the thorax. If Armstrong fudges his political points about US imperialism, religious hypocrisy and media control with regular call-and-response daaay-os, it's because he knows his band are, at core, more party than pontification.

Hence, despite Basketcase, Minority and American Idiot uniting the Emirates in one gigantic hug-mosh, the highlight of Green Day's show is when they crack open the costume box and play a medley of Teenage Kicks, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and Lulu's Shout, with drummer Tré Cool dressed as a bondage Edna Everage, bassist Mike Dirnt as an elderly Mario Brother and Armstrong as a circus droog being casually humped by the rabbit. If this is an emo meltdown, confiscate their medication.

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